What If I Was Wrong?
She lays upon the plain white sheets, ones that
crinkle with every movement, but she hasn’t shifted a muscle in three
days.
How long does the body last without water… food?
That’s all she has, a body, trapping a mind not
quite ready to slip off into oblivion.
She has fought for every second, every minute, every day. Still, for all her clinging, the inevitable
bears down on her, a darkness she can’t conquer.
She hears voices, some distant and unfamiliar. Her Jonathan is there, sitting by her
bedside, as she told him he should be.
His purpose is to care for his mother.
He never married. She wouldn’t
let him. If he had found a woman he
would have become like his older brother, James. Her eldest son has a wife and two
daughters. She has only a handful of
pictures as memories of her only grandchildren.
Her daughter-in-law is to blame, turning a son against his mother and
toward religion, the fabrications of weak minds.
She grabs a breath of air with her lungs and pulls
it into her body. It is getting more and
more difficult to breathe. Jonathan gets
up and walks across the room to the window.
She feels movement but can barely see the shadows of his journey from
the chair to the view of the outer world.
What does he see?
She can’t recall the season.
He will be alone, Jonathan. He will mark her passing as a day of sadness,
nothing more. He has few ties to a
brother who sold out his family. Briefly
she wonders when the brothers last spoke.
She decides it is unimportant.
James has embraced some Christian hocus-pocus.
She told him that.
Told him exactly what faith and religion were. fables, stories, based on
books full of nonsense. They were
educated people, she, her husband and both her sons. They were above all that nonsense. God was… and still is a creation conjured
from the need of biological beings to feel protected. God… the imagined entity was… and still is a
sign of human weakness. Simple minds
created him… and his heaven, to shield themselves from their fears of
loneliness and death.
Am I afraid to die.
Her husband, Albert, left her eleven years
ago. Cancer was merciful to him. The disease ravaged his body in three short
months. It has taken nine years to
destroy her flesh. Maybe she was
stronger than Albert. Maybe she had more
will to live.
Had. Interesting,
instead of has. Is her will to live of
the past tense.
Jonathan sits back in the chair at her
bedside. She has molded what he has
become, dependent on her. Has she made
him weak?
A black hole.
That’s all death is. A black
hole.
There is no afterlife. There is no God.
She has clung to a miserable existence, slowly
dying from the inside out. Why is James
not here? She told him to stay
away. At the very least he obeyed that
one command.
Another breath.
Her vision clears. Jonathan is
looking toward her. There are no tears
in his eyes. He doesn’t know how to
cry. Maybe there is nothing to cry for.
It’s a black hole, deep and dark.
She opens her mouth and a mumble slips out beyond
her dried lips. Jonathan is
listening. She knows the words she wants
to say, but she can’t shape them.
“Mom.” He speaks without feeling, without
compassion.
Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. The corners of her vision begin to fade to
gray, then black. The air escaping her
lungs has no shape without a tongue willing to mold.
“Mom… it’s alright,” Jonathan says, his attention
drawn to the window across the room.
He longs to be anywhere but here. She knows.
Her tongue is free for a moment. She thinks she can speak. All that seeks to escape from her lungs is
air, vital oxygen. The pain in her chest
she doesn’t feel, but she knows it’s there.
Jonathan rises again, not knowing her end is near. The black is reaching out to claim her. She grabs one more breath. A last one.
A final one.
And her words take shape in the final exhale of an
old women on the edge of death.
“What if I was wrong?”
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